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Now comes the question, equally calling for an answer,
whether those souls that have quitted the places of earth retain
memory of their lives- all souls or some, of all things, or of
some things, and, again, for ever or merely for some period not
very long after their withdrawal.
A true investigation of this matter requires us to establish
first what a remembering principle must be- I do not mean what
memory is, but in what order of beings it can occur. The nature
of memory has been indicated, laboured even, elsewhere; we still
must try to understand more clearly what characteristics are
present where memory exists.
Now a memory has to do with something brought into ken from
without, something learned or something experienced; the
Memory-Principle, therefore, cannot belong to such beings as are
immune from experience and from time.
No memory, therefore, can be ascribed to any divine being, or to
the Authentic-Existent or the Intellectual-Principle: these are
intangibly immune; time does not approach them; they possess
eternity centred around Being; they know nothing of past and
sequent; all is an unbroken state of identity, not receptive of
change. Now a being rooted in unchanging identity cannot
entertain memory, since it has not and never had a state
differing from any previous state, or any new intellection
following upon a former one, so as to be aware of contrast
between a present perception and one remembered from before.
But what prevents such a being [from possessing memory in the
sense of] perceiving, without variation in itself, such outside
changes as, for example, the kosmic periods?
Simply the fact that following the changes of the revolving
kosmos it would have perception of earlier and later: intuition
and memory are distinct.
We cannot hold its self-intellections to be acts of memory; this
is no question of something entering from without, to be grasped
and held in fear of an escape; if its intellections could slip
away from it [as a memory might] its very Essence [as the
Hypostasis of inherent Intellection] would be in peril.
For the same reason memory, in the current sense, cannot be
attributed to the soul in connection with the ideas inherent in
its essence: these it holds not as a memory but as a possession,
though, by its very entrance into this sphere, they are no longer
the mainstay of its Act.
The Soul-action which is to be observed seems to have induced the
Ancients to ascribe memory, and "Recollection," [the Platonic
Anamnesis] to souls bringing into outward manifestation the ideas
they contain: we see at once that the memory here indicated is
another kind; it is a memory outside of time.
But, perhaps, this is treating too summarily a matter which
demands minute investigation. It might be doubted whether that
recollection, that memory, really belongs to the highest soul and
not rather to another, a dimmer, or even to the Couplement, the
Living-Being. And if to that dimmer soul, when and how has it
come to be present; if to the Couplement, again when and how?
We are driven thus to enquire into these several points: in which
of the constituents of our nature is memory vested- the question
with which we started- if in the soul, then in what power or
part; if in the Animate or Couplement- which has been supposed,
similarly to be the seat of sensation- then by what mode it is
present, and how we are to define the Couplement; finally whether
sensation and intellectual acts may be ascribed to one and the
same agent, or imply two distinct principles.
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